Newly published: Institutional Crisis in 21st Century Britain

Today sees the publication of a new volume, edited by David Richards, Martin Smith and Colin Hay which arises from a conference held in Sheffield and co-sponsored by SPERI.

The book, Institutional Crisis in 21st-Century Britain, reflects on the multi-dimensional character of the crisis of British institutions today. A ‘perfect storm’ appears to have engulfed many of Britain’s most important institutions – the banking sector for malpractice, Parliament for its expenses scandal, the media for phone-hacking and the police for duplicity and corruption. This raises a fundamental question as to whether there is an endemic crisis in British political, economic and social institutions or instead simply a set of contingent Events|News that have been discursively constructed and presented as a collective crisis?

This volume offer the first major, wholesale consideration of the extent to which a crisis of legitimacy has taken root in Britain’s key institutions. It does so by exploring the nature of crisis across a diverse range of institutions, assessing the accuracy of the ‘crisis’ label and crucially considers whether a set of shared underlying pathologies exist that has led to a point of collective crisis and the need for fundamental renewal.